Campus of Religions

Honorable Mention Award

Planning Date: 2020
Usable Area: 20.000m2

Architecture: Mina Yaney
Structural Engineering: Bollinger+Grohmann
Fire Safety: FireX Gresslehner GmbH 
Landscape Planning: Kräftner Landschaftsarchitektur
HVAC: Ingenieurbüro Russ
Electrical Engineering: ETHF – Helmut Fortmüller
Assistance: Karola Gump

An interreligious community center
The proposal was developed for the international European competition “Campus for Religions” which was announced in April 2020 by the archdiocese of Vienna’s catholic church in Austria and received an honorable mention award. The brief was to design an interreligious building comprising a campus for the catholic pedagogical college along sacral buildings for 8 different religious communities with a 2000m² collective space. The project’s site is situated in Aspern-Seestadt (in Vienna) which is one of Europe’s largest urban development projects.

The building is conceptualised as a skin which acts as mediator between the different religions. As such the architectural design aims to maintain the different identities of the religious communities while simultaneously fusing them into a cohesive interreligious whole.

Emanating from the huge common space, the ground gradually morphs into the college’s facade and roof as a topographical skin. The roof is extended as a 5700 m² continuous sloping roofgarden which connects the college roof with all 8 sacral buildings’ roofs while opening the campus to the public. A sequence of cubic glas domes are incised in the roof above each sacral building’s altar. As such they act as attic windows on the ground floor. On the roofgarden they operate as glass light volumes with inscribed prayers of each corresponding religion. Thereby they make the different religions accessible to the general public while indicating a divine space where all religions intersect.

The roofgarden constitutes a hanging garden as well as a structural and symbolic unifier which, as divine or transcendental space, is conceived as a topographical and programmatic continuity of the “common space” on the ground floor. On the ground zone the religious communities practice their individual and different rituals and prayers while on the roof terrace a place of interreligious unity is celebrated. The green space, “the organic”, is the coupling element which unites all religions through the act of creation. This landscape continuum is hence the “common ground” or the skin that coheres us together. The skin as a mediator, between the environment and physiological processes in the living organism, becomes the identity-establishing principle of the campus.

“The Campus for Religions” acts as a skin between the different religions as well as between the human and the divine. The entire architectural composition constitutes a materialisation of such mediating condition through a hybrid building typology which synthesizes building and park into a new architectural configuration. The park’s large scale creates an architectural composition which on the one hand is perceived as a unity, but on the other hand resides in continual transformation. Hence an evolution-oriented unity emerges which displays the campus’ holistic philosophy.

Structural engineering:
The design includes a two to five-story building with a trapezoidal floor plan geometry. In order to enable the fastest possible construction time, the construction of the upper floors is planned largely as prefabricated and semi-finished elements. The ceilings on the upper floors are designed as a wood-concrete composite system. As a hybrid system, this system combines the advantages of two building materials. The wood absorbs the tensile forces and the concrete absorbs the compressive forces that act on the ceiling.

The selected ceiling system has a high load capacity and bending rigidity with a relatively low weight and a relatively low overall height. The wooden panels of the ceiling system rest on wooden beams running lengthwise. Due to increased loads, the top ceiling uses steel beams instead of wooden beams. The space between the wooden beams is used for building service lines. The effective ceiling height is thereby reduced. The vertical load transfer takes place using core wall panels and wooden supports along the support axes.

The staircase geometry on the courtyard side is designed using reinforced concrete construction. Sloping reinforced concrete toothed girders rest on reinforced concrete supports and serve as supports for a tribune-like prefabricated staircase construction. The building’s horizontal bracing is done using lift cores and wall panels made of reinforced concrete. These are arranged in both main directions of the building and transfer horizontal loads down to the foundation.

The structure is founded on a reinforced concrete slab under the basement in accordance with the foundation recommendation of the soil report. In the area of ​​increased load concentration we created a haunched thickening of the base plate. The reinforced concrete components of the basement floors are intended as a waterproof construction.

The chosen construction method enables a high degree of prefabrication and a very quick construction process. A simple supporting structure with low concrete consumption thanks to the use of wood-concrete composite ceilings goes in line with the concept of resource conservation and sustainability.